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It Is Written

Sabbath School 4th Quarter 2023: God's Mission My Mission

Eric Flickinger

Kleber Goncalves

01 God’s Mission Part 1

02 God’s Mission to Us Part 2

Greg Whitsett

03 God’s Call to Mission

Amy Whitsett

04 Sharing God’s Mission

05 Excuses to Avoid Mission

Doug Venn

07 Mission to My Neighbor

06 Motivation and Preparation for Mission

Clifmond Shameerudeen

08 Mission to the Needy

09 Mission to the Powerful

Jeff Scoggins

10 Mission to the Unreached Part 1

11 Mission to the Unreached Part 2

12 Esther and Mordecai

Welcome to Sabbath School brought to you by It Is Written.

This week we're looking at lesson number 7, and lesson number 7 is Mission to My Neighbor.

How can you reach those who are close to you, And how do you recognize the best ways to do that?

That's what we're going to be looking at this week.

Father, we want to thank you for the opportunity that you give us once again to learn how we can better share your love with others.

And we ask that you'll bless us in that today.

We're excited this week to have with us Doug Venn.

Doug is currently serving as the assistant to the president for Adventist Possibility Ministries.

But when he wrote this part of the lesson, he was the director of Global Mission Urban Center.

We've got a really interesting subject that we're looking at this week, Mission to My Neighbor.

So, we don't have to go to the far corners of the world.

We don't have to have any special skills, but God brings people close to us, or there are already people within our circle of influence, and we're looking at how we can reach those individuals today.

Yeah, I can't wait to get into God's word as we look and find lessons to apply to our lives.

Well let me begin by asking this question.

In this study, this week's study, we're looking at God's mission to all people.

That includes our neighbor, because our neighbor is right there in many, many cases.

Why does God ask us to love our neighbors?

Well, what we see here is that, Eric, we are able to see the heart of God, because when he asks us to love our neighbor, why does he do that?

It's because he has a heart of love for all people, whether those who are close to us or those who are far away.

And Actually, in our memory verse, in Luke 10, verse 27, it says there that, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength, with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.

So, Jesus asks us to love our neighbor as ourselves, those who are close to us.

But those who are close to us may not always be exactly like us.

They may operate in different world views or different perspectives and so forth.

There's a story in the Bible about Jesus interacting with a lawyer.

And he was close to Jesus, but he had some different perspectives.

And we read about that in Luke chapter 10 and verse number 25.

Help us understand what's going on in this interaction between Jesus and the lawyer a little bit.

Yeah, well it's interesting to see here the question that this lawyer asks is that, teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

And so there we can look at a couple things that, what's going on in his heart?

We know that yes, the Bible says that he has a motive, that he's on a mission.

This lawyer is looking to interrogate or to test Jesus.

Whether that's good or bad, I think this was that he was intending either to publicly shame Jesus or to get some evidence that the Sanhedrin could use against Jesus and his ministry.

We can see in this lawyer's heart that in this question, he's looking that I've got to have a checklist in order to be saved.

So Jesus responds to him though, even though...

In a question, which is a great way that Jesus responds to people with great regularity.

And he responds to this fellow in a question, what can we learn from this?

What's Jesus desiring to accomplish and what might we be able to apply to our own lives and our ministry to our neighbors by looking at how Jesus responded to him?

Well in Christ's response that we can actually see in verse 26, Jesus asks him the question, what is written in the law and how do you read it?

And so in this, that Jesus, He actually sees in this guy who has mixed motives towards Christ, but Jesus sees him as a candidate for the kingdom.

He sees them that this man, he doesn't know it, but Jesus says, ah, this 1 could be part of my team.

He could actually be 1 of my disciples." So Jesus just doesn't ignore him, he doesn't dismiss him, he doesn't just blow him off.

He actually looks at him as a candidate for the kingdom.

And so thus we see this question that Jesus is saying, well, let's hear a little more.

And that's where like in the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 looks at how we live life.

There are some who, when they don't have a relationship with God, they're just like hedonistic, you know, I'm here to party and that's, you know, the 1 who parties most has the best life.

And because, As Paul says there, if the dead do not rise, if we don't have that anchor hope in Jesus Christ in the resurrection, then we should, as Paul says, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die.

And so I see here that this, a lesson that we can apply from Jesus Christ is that we need to be aware that we're on the edge of eternity with every conversation with every individual that God puts into our lives.

So an example that Jesus sets for us, Let's say that we run into somebody in our lives, our neighbor, as it were, who has a very different worldview, who maybe has a completely different faith from our own.

We'll make the assumption that we're Christians.

And somebody else happens to be Muslim or Hindu or atheist or agnostic or some other variety of Christianity that's different enough from what we believe that it's, we're not neighbors theologically, I guess is a good way to say it.

But we are, we come across as, what kind of lesson do you think we could learn from the way that Jesus interacted with this lawyer that we might be able to apply to our lives as we're seeking to share our faith with somebody else.

Well, as we look here, I love the Bible because it answers itself.

And so I love how when this lawyer in verse 27 gives the answer from the Old Testament that love the Lord your God and love your neighbor.

And Jesus then says, you have answered rightly, do this and you will live.

And so here the Lord Jesus is giving us example that when we encounter others, whether from other world religions or other denominations, that we need to be pointing them to God's Word.

Not my opinion, not your opinion, or not the opinion of other religious leaders, whether that's whatever those are around the world, because there's different names for them.

It's just that we need to be able to point people to God's Word.

I'm reminded though that this isn't the first time when Jesus points, in this case, this lawyer to God's word.

Because what happens with the temptation?

We're here on this with this ministry of it is written.

And so, but if we even go back further in time, not just in Christ's ministry, but we can actually look that it was in heaven where Lucifer or Satan, he wanted the angels and the heavenly hosts to do things his way.

He wanted to sing the song and he wanted people, He provided an alternative to God's government and God's law.

But yet we can see this throughout history.

Even Cain, if we go back to Genesis, he brought an alternative form of worship and an alternative to the sin sacrifice.

Well look what I've earned, look what I've grown, You know, these awesome zucchini.

I don't know how many of you guys, but I grew up with a mom who grew zucchini and 1 plant could be like a zucchini bomb.

We'd go as kids, go to the neighbor's house and ring the doorbell and leave, you know, 3 zucchinis and run.

But anyway, here Cain has the same attitude that Lucifer had, is that I'm wanting to do life on my own.

I'm wanting to handle my sin, guilt, and shame on my own.

But Christ and God is giving us an other way that is based on his word.

Even in Revelation 14, as we've just recently looked at, the 3 angels' messages, and we studied together, the second angel talks about how Babylon has fallen, and like a house of cards, all world religions and systems will be coming crashing down because they're not anchored on God's word, on his grace, and on his calling for us today.

And so I think those are some of the lessons that I wanted to apply and that we can learn from this study.

Series

Sabbath School 4th Quarter 2023: God's Mission My Mission

07 Mission to My Neighbor

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

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